Category Archives: Terrorism

Rand Paul: ‘If You Like Your Privacy You Can Keep It’ (NHAHAHAHAHAHA!)

Barack Obama, Constitution, Homeland Security, Regulation, Terrorism, The State

It is not about calibrating the NSA’s infractions on the right to privacy, it’s about keeping that right.

Sen. Rand Paul’s description (the line above is my own) of the gist of Obama’s tweaks to the National Security Agency’s surveillance program should be punctured by maniacal, loud laughter, the kind used by your vintage movie villain: “NHAHAHAHAHAHA!” In essence, intimated Sen. Paul, Obama is promising that, “If you like your privacy you can keep it.”

On the odd occasion that he’s good, Rand is very good. “It’s not about who holds it,” he continued, “I don’t want them collecting the information.”

That’s all there is to it.

Then Paul went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like, “Obama’s heart really is in the right place,” and that his “motives are not bad.”

Full Text of Obama’s Speech on his plans for “Surveillance With A Smile.”

On Health Care & ‘Homo Economicus,’ And The Spoils Of Entrapment & Political Predation

Economy, Government, Healthcare, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Regulation, Terrorism

Health Care & ‘Homo Economicus. Even the pro-Obama socialist youth of America act as “Homo Economicus”: they know they are young and healthy and unlikely to fall ill. Why should they partake in a scheme that financially punishes them for this natural advantage? Millennials want us to pay for them, not the reverse.

“Federal Health Care Enrollees: Older Outnumber Younger”:

.. more than 2 million people who have signed up for private [it’s not private: “A healthcare cauldron of Obama’s creation, government-run exchanges constitute a planned economy, not a market economy”] health insurance through the exchanges set up by the federal government. … Of those who signed up in the first three months, 55 percent are age 45 to 64, officials said. Only 24 percent of those choosing a health insurance plan are 18 to 34, a group that is usually healthier and needs fewer costly medical services. People 55 to 64 – just below the age at which people qualify for Medicare — represented the largest group, at 33 percent.”

Speaking of the Dah Factor, or of the news newsmen were not anticipating (but you were):

“Review Of Terrorism Cases Finds NSA Spying Helped Very Little”:

Surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency helped very little when it came to cases brought against individuals the United States says were linked to al-Qaida. …

A great deal of efforts of our spymaster “protectors” go into entrapment; concocting elaborate traps to ensnare potential “evil doers”; “setting swarthy simpletons up and then nabbing them in a so-called terrorism sting.”

More non-news:

“Majority In Congress Are Millionaires”: Of course, the reporter doesn’t tell us how the predatory political class has acquired wealth, for he doesn’t think that it’s important, nevertheless:

For the first time in history, more than half the members of Congress are millionaires, according to a new analysis of financial disclosure reports conducted by the non-partisan .
Of the 534 current members of the House and Senate, 268 had an average net worth of $1 million or more in 2012 – up from 257 members in 2011. The median net worth for members of the House and Senate was $1,008,767.

Rep. Darrell Issa notwithstanding—he made his fortune, if I am not mistaken, in business, before joining the parasites in Congress—“The political class and its sycophants utilize the political means to earn their keep. As libertarian economist Murray Rothbard reminded, these ‘are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth”—the economic means is honest and productive, the political means is dishonest and predatory…but oh so very effective.'”

Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, History, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism

“Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi” is the current column, now on WND. A excerpt:

“Us against al Qaeda”: This has been—still is—the narrowly conceived narrative among neoconservatives. As the politically provincial neoconservative foreign-policy paradigm has it, those were the forces that played out in the Benghazi affair, in which the American mission was left undefended, resulting in the slaughter of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans (who, given the pecking order in the Empire, generally go unnamed). …

… Uncovered by The Times’ investigation, however, was a very different reality in Benghazi—”murkier than either of those story lines suggests. Benghazi,” contends Kirkpatrick, “was not infiltrated by al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs.”

In particular are neoconservatives fulminating over the findings that “turned up no evidence that al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault,” and that “the attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Col. Gadhafi.”

How can that be? Easily: The history of Libya is festooned with similar ransacking and burning of consulates by angry local mobs. Alas, in the ignorance it cultivates about the past, America is Cicero’s perpetual child. By the definition of the great Roman statesman, “Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.” …

… The facts in the Benghazi affair have likewise been unwoven and retied into two contradictory narratives to suit the respective sides.

Think of lab rats racing through a maze, as you watch the sub-intelligent, dual-panel “dialogue” conducted on the teli. Hosts Stephanie Cutter (left-wing, social-democratic rat) and S. E. Cupp (right-wing, social-democratic rat): Each rat runs with a designated, neatly bifurcated (Republican or Democratic) political orthodoxy. Each is a “maze-bright” rat, and not the possessor and giver of any truth. …

Read the complete column. “Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi” is on WND.

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The Unchallenged Man Of The Year

Constitution, Fascism, Homeland Security, Technology, Terrorism, The State, Uncategorized

Those who are not suspended in the moral abyss with mainstream media already know that Edward Joseph Snowden is the best of America. (Included in the septic mainstream are the interchangeable females on a Fox News idiot’s extravaganza called ‘The Five.’ Said a nimble mind by the name of Andrea Tarantula: ‘If the [National Security Agency] are competent with my information; they can have it.'”)

“At 29, Snowden upended the National Security Agency on its own turf,” heroically bringing to light how—contrary to the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, in particular—the NSA had instituted “a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations.”.

One of the positive outcomes of Snowden’s actions is that “U.S. technology giants including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo,” are taking “extraordinary steps to block the collection of data by their government”:

Led by Google and then Yahoo, one company after another announced expensive plans to encrypt its data traffic over tens of thousands of miles of cable. It was a direct — in some cases, explicit — blow to NSA collection of user data in bulk. If the NSA wanted the information, it would have to request it or circumvent the encryption one target at a time.
As these projects are completed, the Internet will become a less friendly place for the NSA to work. The agency can still collect data from virtually anyone, but collecting from everyone will be harder.
The industry’s response, Smith acknowledged, was driven by a business threat. U.S. companies could not afford to be seen as candy stores for U.S. intelligence. But the principle of the thing, Smith said, “is fundamentally about ensuring that customer data is turned over to governments pursuant to valid legal orders and in accordance with constitutional principles.”

It is to a heroic young man such as this that we should all say: “Thank you for your service, Mr. Snowden.”

Have a happy New Year.
ilana